Radio Commercials Bring Up The Best Of Talent

January 28, 1985

The belch was Joel Corey`s idea.

He stuck it in as an ad lib during the first run-through taping of a 60-second radio commercial that premiered last week on 12 Chicago stations, and it stayed in the script, in a subdued incarnation, all the way through to the finished product.

``That was good,`` beamed writer and director Jack Badofsky at Corey`s surprise eructation. ``But don`t make your character so rough around the edges.``

``Is he a New York agent?`` asked Larry Moran, Corey`s costar in the commercial.

``Let`s not overdo it,`` said Badofsky. ``Try again.``

The idea is as follows: Corey plays a seen-it-all theatrical agent who is a ``high school, but no college-type`` in Badofsky`s words. Moran, who bills himself as ``the funny voice man,`` plays an eager young impressionist who wants to be a star. Problem is, all of his impressions are wrong. His Peter Lorre sounds like Walter Brennan, his Katharine Hepburn like Mae West and so on.

The belch was a dramatization of the fact that Corey`s character in the commercial has supposedly just eaten lunch at a pizza restaurant that tries unsuccessfully to imitate the pizza at the sponsor`s restaurant. ``Kid,`` he says as his stomach roils, ``I don`t need no more bad imitations.``

It`s a wistful little dialogue, and fairly simple as radio commercials go. But even the most sophisticated radio spots, with sound effects and jingles, are easy to make compared to the average television commercial. Entire books have been written about the vast minutiae involved in producing one TV ad. The short and happy life of a radio commercial, however, is much different.

Badofsky, of the Smith, Badofsky and Raffel Inc. advertising agency, rolled a script for the ``Bad Imitations`` commercial out of his typewriter last summer. The sponsor`s vice president of marketing, in conference with an agency account executive, had outlined several key points he wanted to get across, the main one being that his pizza restaurant is distinct from competitors with similar names.

Sometimes sponsors are very explicit about plot, jokes and dialogue, but in this case Badofsky had free rein. The final script ran somewhat less than two pages and, like many commercials these days, was designed to be funny but to have no punch line and to include some overlapping dialogue to give it the improvisational sound that is all the rage.

Badofsky reads his work aloud over and over to see if it sounds natural and will fit into the allotted time. When he is satisfied, he delivers the script to the sponsor for approval and editing. Normally the commercial would then be recorded and aired as soon as possible, but in this case, due to the sponsor`s budgeting and promotional plans, ``Bad Imitations`` sat on the shelf for several months.

When Badofsky finally got the go-ahead, he rented a production studio on North Michigan Avenue and began casting. Unlike in television, there are seldom open auditions for radio commercials. Producers tend to know the freelance voice actors in town personally, and over the years they build up what amounts to their own repertory companies.

For those with particularly talented tonsils, voice-over and announcing work, while somewhat anonymous, can be quite lucrative. Standard scale payment is $168 a commercial, and those who know the right people frequently record several a day.

Joel Corey, for example, is busy enough that he was wearing a paging beeper at the recording session for ``Bad Imitiations`` on Jan. 16. He was in two different commercials that Badofsky recorded and edited in about three hours early that afternoon.

Actors arrived and departed on a fairly tight schedule. Their first look at the script was generally only moments before walking into the heavily soundproofed, carpeted recording area. Before the tape started to roll, Badofsky, who sat at a desk outside the recording area drinking Sprite and making notes on his script, issued last minute instructions.

``Joel, (pretend) it`s 4 p.m. and you`ve been seeing lousy acts all day,`` he said through the intercom. ``You`re sick of it. Larry, you`re the male ingenue; the kid from Keokuk.``

``My normal, obsequious tone?`` asked Moran.

``Exactly. I was gonna use the word `obsequious,` but I figured you didn`t know what it meant.``

Everybody laughed, as they did when Corey`s belch broke off the first take. Faithful to the spirit of the commercial itself, the recording session was both playful and professional, with none of the frantic running about and flaring of tempers that marks television ad production.

Corey stood behind one microphone, his script on a music stand in front of him, and faced Moran behind a separate microphone. Each voice came out of a separate speaker in the anteroom where Badofsky, his associate, Sharon Lang, and engineer Bob Benson listened intently.

As the actors read their lines, both added gestures and facial expressions as though someone would ultimately watch them. Neither